Passenger to London

A very solid and relatively short British espionage film. A government agent is returning from France with secret blueprints that were stolen from his government. On the train ride home, thieves break into his compartment and murder him. But the agent anticipated his attackers and managed to hide the blueprints.

The British government sends out another agent, this time Frank Drayton (John Warwick) tries to recover the missing blueprints. The viewer knows the blueprints have been hidden in the luggage of a female passenger on the train. While Drayton works to recover the documents he also sets out to learn who murdered his fellow agent.

The most interesting thing about this movie to me is that I didn't recognize a single name on the cast or crew lists. Oh, I know I've seen co-lead Jenny Laird before; she had roles in BLACK NARCISSUS, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, and a key serial of the original DOCTOR WHO, "Planet of the Spiders". However, this is a real Quota Quickie, with a plot which the characters explain to each other in dialogue, so I would imagine she, like most of the cast, were not terribly expensive. The producer directed, the music only appears at key moments and the whole thing times out at 57 minutes.

Some plans have been stolen, and the agent who had recovered them for King and Country has been shot on a train. However, anticipating this, he managed to get off a note to Aubrey Pollock indicating that he has secreted them on Miss Laird. Mr. Pollock sends John Warwick to recover them. Warwick, in short order, ingratiates himself to Miss Laird, locks a couple of spies seeking the plans in their room and flees with Miss Laird, back to London for a denouement.

Director of Photography Stanley Grant -- best known, probably, for special effects in IN WHICH WE SERVE -- gets one tracking shot and some nice low-key lighting to strut his stuff. However, while this film is short enough to be tolerable, there's little here to make it terribly interesting on its own terms or because of where it fits into cinema's history.

An early quickie made for Fox British in which director Lawrence Huntingdon shows nascent promise in the scene in the train between Neufchâtel and Dieppe played out without music, relying for suspense largely on just the noise of the train; on which a couple of extremely mean-looking foreign spies played by Ivan Wilmot and Paul Neville are at large, the latter (who carries a flick knife) even looking a bit like Eric Pohlmann (then still resident in Vienna).

The fatalistic line "One government's as good as another. I don't know what all the fuss is about!" sadly still resonates eight decades later.

Don't expect to be sat on the edge of your seat but at 50 minutes long this creaky old spy thriller is awash with old world charm in the form of a cheery-chappy hero, a hapless young damsel, pantomime villains and stuffy establishment figures. A British agent is murdered trying to smuggle secret blueprints back home and manages to hide them in the luggage of a female passenger before he is done for. Who will get to her first? The Secret Service or the murderous thugs? Suspend disbelief and don't worry about the daft characters. This is actually quite tense in its own way and a nostalgic glimpse at a world long since passed.

If a James Bond film were written by a public schoolboy who had just seen Hitchcock's 39 STEPS, this would be the result. This splendid ripping yarn is a fabulous, fast-moving spy picture that's so gloriously corny and clichéd you can't help loving it.

Obviously it lacks the finesse and style you'd get from a Hitchcock or Carol Reed film or indeed originality, believability, tension...or indeed anything you'd expect from a professional...but it's such rip-roaring fun it's almost fantastic. As an example of filmmaking, on one hand it's cheap and amateurish but on the other, it's so entertaining, ticking all the boxes, you have to conclude that it does what it sets out to do so must therefore actually be good!

Whether this appeals to you depends on whether or not you want to soak up gallons and gallons of authentic 1937 atmosphere. This really transports you back in time - you could almost be living there wondering why Edward VIII had to give up the throne, why he was visiting that curious Mr Hitler and whether that new thing the BBC had called television would ever catch on.

The cast are hardly convincing but 32 year old John Warwick (why did young English men look so old in the 30s?) and pretty Jenny Laird make a very personable duo. They're perfect for a film like this. I know I shouldn't but I loved this!